Some researchers have found that the uranium conglomerates bearing uraninite have a texture and mineralogical makeup (uraninite, pyrite, molybdenite, and sulfides) one would expect if they were deposited by hydrothermal solutions, indicating that the uranium was deposited deep in the earth, far removed from the atmosphere, similar to what is observed happening in the origin of modern and more recently formed uraninite deposits9 (which obviously occurred in an oxygenic atmosphere).

Well-preserved fossils of stromatolites in the Tumbiana Formation, in the Pilbara region, have been dated as 2.72 billion years old, more than 270 million years older than the previous oldest evidence of oxygenic photosynthesis, UNSW doctoral student David Flannery has told a symposium in Perth.

His research is focused on genome sequencing and molecular analyses of heliobacteria, proteobacteria and a cyanobacterium with the ability to shift into anoxygenic (oxygen-free) photosynthesis in the presence of sulfide, a possible evolutionary "missing link" between anoxygenic and oxygenic photosynthetic organisms.